Synergy is usually awash with booth competitions to “Win an iPad” or similar.
Here’s my handy guide to where to head to first to drop your business card, or get your badge scanned, to be in with a chance of winning.
| Vendor | Entry method | Prize | Drawn | Full details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Entry method | Prize | Drawn | Full details |
| Sanbolic | Booth 515 or online here | iPad mini. | Drawing will be held 15 minutes before expo closing on Tuesday, May 21st. | Here |
| NComputing | Booth 306 | $250 Visa gift card | At the booth, if the key fits | |
| RES | Booth #402/403 | Free t-shirt and other prizes for wearing it! | Ongoing, whilst stocks last | Here |
| Portland Europe | Booth 521 | iPad mini | On the stand | |
| Citrix | Meet the Experts booth in XenCenty | iPad minis x 7 | Attend one of these sessions: Tues 3pm Citrix Solutions Lab Tues 7pm Using Podio Weds 8.30am Synergy IT - scanning Weds 12.45pm Citrix IT - Apps on any device Weds 2.30pm Citrix IT - Hybrid clouds Thurs 1.30pm Citrix IT - Simplifying mobility Thurs 3.00pm Citrix IT - Delivering desktops | See poster boards around conference venue |
| VMTurbo | VMTurbo booth | Win an iPad | Friday 24th May noon on the booth | |
| Citrix | Social media hub | $500 ThinkGeek.com gift card | Complete a survey to enter the draw at the end of the conference | |
| Comtrade | Booth 507 | Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 | At the booth | |
| Netapp | Wear a Netapp t-shirt and be at the booth at the draw | iPad | Thursday 4.30pm Friday midday | |
| Netapp | Submit the best tweet of the day. Play the Netapp trivia game | $25 Amex gift card (tweet) and $75 gift card for the trivia game | ||
| EMC | Business card/card scan | iPad | ||
| Layer 8 training | Online form | iPad |
What to wear?
- Check the weather forecast and pack appropriately
- Whilst it’s tempting to just bring t-shirts and shorts, conference venues and break-out rooms often crank up the air-con so can be chilly if sitting for several hours doing a lab.
- Conference attire is business casual (khakis, polo shirts, etc.)
- If your hotel has a pool, bring your trunks or speedos (no mankini’s please)
What to pack?
- Remember you’ll be getting a laptop bag/backpack as part of your registration.
- If you’re booked on a learning lab you’ll need a laptop
- Phone/laptop/iPad chargers
- US travel adaptors for said chargers/laptops
- If you’re taking one of the free exams, any study material you might need
- If you are from the EU remember you’ll need an ESTA completed in advance of your departure
- Business cards for networking opportunities
- Passport!
- Print off this local map before you leave
- If you’re a fan of freebies, remember to leave space in your luggage for both your conference bag and the variety of bugs, pens, stressballs and t-shirts you’ll no doubt return with!
- The conference halls are large, and you’ll spend a fair amount of time on your feet. Pack comfortable shoes.
Before you leave
- Set your work out-of-office email and voice-mail messages
- Arrange your airport/hotel transfer. Synergy attendees can get 10% discount on airport shuttle services.
- Book your instructor-led learning lab. You can pre-book two of these. You can attend more, but need to wait in a standby line at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start time.
- Book your free exam
- Book your session with Citrix support and/or Citrix consulting services.
- Download the Summit/Synergy mobile apps and download the Anaheim resort area in Google maps whilst on WiFi to avoid expensive roaming data charges
- Speak to your mobile operator to ensure international roaming is enabled for your number. This is very hard to do once abroad when your phone doesn’t work after getting off the plane!
- Speak to your bank and/or credit card company and let them know you’re travelling so your card doesn’t get blocked for suspected fraud
- Check in online to get a better seat.
During the conference
Keep connected
- If you’re coming from outside of the US, purchase a Net10 SIM from a local retailer . For $65 dollars you can get an Net10 SIM card and pre-paid data plan that will give you 1Gb of 4G data (then unlimited 3G data/voice/sms).
- Hook yourself up to the venue WiFi when around the conference centre
- Use any free WiFi provided in your hotel (most charge for in-room WiFi, but provide free WiFi in the lobby)
- Take quiet moments to Skype the family. Even a 5 minute call will bring a smile to a loved one.
Learn like crazy
There’s loads of opportunity to expand your knowledge during conference.
- Take one (or several) self-paced learning labs on a few products that you might not be so familiar with.
- Ask your burning support questions and to Citrix support gurus in the services pavillion, and pose your architecture questions to CCS architects.
- Take your pre-booked exam and instructor learning lab
- Learn and share your experiences with fellow delegates, UKCUG leaders and CTPs at the Lunchtime table chats
- Attend the GeekSpeak sessions to hear from industry experts and fellow Geeks
Don’t be shy
There are load of networking opportunities to get to know some new peers. Follow the #CitrixSynergy hastag if you’re a twitter user to keep abreast of discussions (although tweet volumes to this will explode once conference starts)
Sign-up to twitter if you’re not a user, even if you don’t plan to use it after the conference. Perhaps follow me during the conference?
Come say hi at one of the Lunchtime tech table chats I’ll be hosting, at the Geek speak tonight event, or at the after party.
Have fun
Whilst Synergy is a great opportunity for learning, there’s also plenty of ways to let your hear down. The Partner appreciation party on Monday, Welcome reception on Tuesday and the Synergy Party with Maroon 5 on Thursday. There will no doubt be various vendor events interspersed during the week. Remember to keep yourself hydrated before collapsing into bed after partying to avoid the massive hangover the next day.
They’ll probably be a community tweet-up at some point. Keep your eyes peeled.
You can also try and score some points on the Synergy Game inside the mobile app. I came third last year, and it really does try and ensure you make the most of your time at Synergy.
Hung over in your hotel?
Win
| Vendor | Entry method | Prize | Drawn | Full details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Entry method | Prize | Drawn | Full details |
| Sanbolic | Booth 515 or online here | iPad mini. | Drawing will be held 15 minutes before expo closing on Tuesday, May 21st. | Here |
| NComputing | Booth 306 | $250 Visa gift card | At the booth, if the key fits | |
| RES | Booth #402/403 | Free t-shirt and other prizes for wearing it! | Ongoing, whilst stocks last | Here |
| Portland Europe | Booth 521 | iPad mini | On the stand | |
| Citrix | Meet the Experts booth in XenCenty | iPad minis x 7 | Attend one of these sessions: Tues 3pm Citrix Solutions Lab Tues 7pm Using Podio Weds 8.30am Synergy IT - scanning Weds 12.45pm Citrix IT - Apps on any device Weds 2.30pm Citrix IT - Hybrid clouds Thurs 1.30pm Citrix IT - Simplifying mobility Thurs 3.00pm Citrix IT - Delivering desktops | See poster boards around conference venue |
| VMTurbo | VMTurbo booth | Win an iPad | Friday 24th May noon on the booth | |
| Citrix | Social media hub | $500 ThinkGeek.com gift card | Complete a survey to enter the draw at the end of the conference | |
| Comtrade | Booth 507 | Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 | At the booth | |
| Netapp | Wear a Netapp t-shirt and be at the booth at the draw | iPad | Thursday 4.30pm Friday midday | |
| Netapp | Submit the best tweet of the day. Play the Netapp trivia game | $25 Amex gift card (tweet) and $75 gift card for the trivia game | ||
| EMC | Business card/card scan | iPad | ||
| Layer 8 training | Online form | iPad |
Waste of a generation
When you think about software, what comes to mind? Traditional office-based applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint? Mobile “Apps” for iPhones and Android? Operating systems? Embedded software powering our cars, microwaves and washing machines? All are examples of software of course, just at different levels of user interaction.
Having working in the IT industry for over 18 years (has it really been that long?!) one notices trends. One major trend is the move to doing everything “in software”. First it was the hypervisor. No more physical tin for our server installs…there is now a layer of “software” abstracting our servers from real silicon.
It was inevitable that following server virtualisation came Network and storage virtualistion with virtual routers and switches like the Nexus and OpenvSwitch. All based upon software. Of course, physical switches contain software too – and quite complex software too – Cisco IOS contains 40+ million lines of code – that’s the same as Windows XP.
Alongside this is the explosion of “apps” for consumer devices, many of which written by individuals working in their bedroom.
Software is going to be important. And increasingly so. And the ability to write software are going to be crucial for our economy if we’re to keep up with demand, and every growing competition developing countries.
If you’ve been a student in a UK school in the past decade, you would of been led to believe “IT” (or ICT as it’s now known) means knowing how to write a letter in Microsoft Word, and add up a column of numbers in Excel and draw some colourful shapes in Paintbrush. This isn’t the IT I was taught at school, nor should it be what our children are being taught now.
We’ve thrown away two generations of potential authors of the next Angry Birds, the next Facebook or the next Xen hypervisor by turning them into Office automatons.
What a waste.
Don’t get me wrong, I think knowing how to use productivity applications, especially the Office suite used in the majority of workplaces is a useful skill, and should be taught at some stage in preparation for life in the workplace. But it’s not ICT, nor should it be labelled as such.
CodeClub
The good news is that things are changing.
The government (perhaps swayed by a large pot of cash from Google and Facebook lobbyists?) appear to be planning to change the ICT curriculum taught to our future generation. The mainstream press seem to agree it’s a good idea.
Having purchased a Raspberry Pi, mainly so I could run RISC OS and XBMC on a computer the size of a credit card and for under £25, I came across a coding tool call Scratch that was baked into the Raspbian OS image. There are thousands of hobbyists doing crazy things with their Pi which is awesome, but one of the original aims of the Raspberry Pi foundation was to create a computer cheap enough that dozens could be given away to pupils to inspire them to code.
Here is where CodeClub comes in. Changing the nationwide ICT curriculum is like turning an oil tanker. It’s going to take a while. So in the meantime, CodeClub aims to plant the seed using volunteers teaching coding to 9-11 year olds via after school clubs.
The video below gives a good overview
TechCity
I’ve been attending Croydon TechCity events since it was founded last year, and one evening was dedicated to technology in education, with one of the founders of CodeClub giving a presentation. As a result of this, a group of organisers started coordinating a plan to start CodeClubs in the boroughs schools.
Time to step up
Anyone who know’s me knows that I’m enormously busy. Working full time as an independent consultant, helping run the UK Citrix User group, speaking at and attending conferences, TechCity, Toastmasters, Purley Business Association, and running a hosting company whilst also being a good husband and father means I have virtually no free time. So fitting in a weekly code club will be a challenge, but I think it’s cause worthy of my time and effort.
So, I reached out to the organisers, registered on the website and was assigned my school earlier this week.
I’m currently honing my Scratch skills, reading up on how other CodeClubs have gone, and reading through the CodeClub curriculum whilst awaiting for my CRB checks to go through before I can officially start my club.
I’ll be blogging about how my club goes, so watch this space for updates!
If this has inspired you to do the same, sign-up on the CodeClub website as a volunteer, and get in touch with your local schools to start your own club, and prepare the next generation of kids with the skills that will allow them to succeed in a world driven by software.
A slightly different blog post for today!
As some of my peers may know, I work as an independent consultant, and have ever since I graduated in 1995! There are many different schemes on the internet that claim to maximise your earnings but I’ve always steered clear of these as many get shut down when legislation catches up with whatever workaround they are using (indemnified loans, offshore trusts etc) to avoid paying tax. I believe everyone who earns money has an obligation to pay their fair share of tax.
However, the government offers a number of schemes to help offset the cost of childcare. One of these is childcare vouchers. I’ve spoken to a number of consultants who have never taken advantage of these on the mistaken belief that it’s too complex to set up and the costs involved in getting a third party company to administer the scheme would outweigh any benefit.
Neither are the case. read more…
Here’s the scenario: Contoso Inc (good name as any eh?) want to block users from a specific country from accessing their infrastructure. Because these users are particularly smart, they’ve been using anonymous proxies that use frequently changing IP addresses to circumvent regular GeoIP location detection, so the company decides to block all IPs from anonymous proxies and use a real-time service.
And conveniently they already have Netscaler technology in place to protect and accelerate their web sites. Good choice Contoso!
I’m actually going to detail two different ways of achieving this, one using a freely available (but only updated monthly) static GeoIP database, and the other using a realtime GeoIP service that meets the original requirement.
We’re going to use quite a few of the Netscaler features: GSLB database, load balancing, responder, http callouts, integrated cache and pattern sets, so make yourself a cuppa, grab a biscuit and let’s go!
I recently had a question posed by a client who wanted to use Access Gateway on Netscaler to provide XenApp published applications to IOS devices.
Straightforward stuff you’d think right?
The situation soon got more complex when I found out that they had outsourced their two-factor authentication service to a third party, and that the usernames used on this system were different to both their internal Active Directory user ids and email addresses.
Even worse, they didn’t even use the existing UPN’s that one might use to authenticate with AD as an alternative to traditional user IDs.
Despite being able to setup multiple authentication services on an Access Gateway VIP, you can only enter a single userid that then get’s used against all authentication servers.
I love a good challenge, so set about working out how I would solve this problem, and I though I’d share the solution via this blog post.
After returning back from a busy week at Summit & Synergy I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learnt and what other questions have arisen as a result.
Announcements
The long-awaited Project Jasper finally saw the light of day, now renamed to project Excalibur (which is also a sub-part of Project Avalon..confused yet?) which sees XenApp moving into the same FMA-based management architecutre as XenDesktop, with the single Studio console (yes, YACNC – Yet Another Console Name Change!) managing the creation of both XenApp and XenDesktop workloads. FlexCast 2 coming to a lab near you on Nov. 1st. The other part of project Avalon that wasn’t talked about a great deal (because it’s still quite a way off) is project Merlin, that brings all the CSP cloud automation to Citrix enterprise offerings, allowing the “cloudification” of your internal IT, automating the creation of users, resources (e.g. exchange), desktops and applications.
There was much love for Cisco, who are now Citrix’ best friend, announcing a new partnership agreement around a number of products including Netscaler, Cloudstack and XenServer. The most exciting prospect of this for me is if Cisco replace their ACE load balancing technology with Netscaler technology and build it right into the switch fabric. Imagine the throughput you could get, and no need for a physical appliance and all that patching. F5 should be rightly running for cover.
Training
I atttended both the instructor-led labs I had booked into, plus one other via the standby queue. The first was Cisco UCS, which I’d not seen before, so this was very informative and I learned a great deal. The second was “Build your cloud in 5 hours” which again was looking at products I’ve only briefly touched on (Cloudstack). Again, this was informative and well written lab, using two Xen-on-Xen VMs to provide two virtual XenServers that Cloudstack could control to build it’s own private cloud. The final lab on the Friday morning was using integrating personal vDisk (formerly known as Ringcube) into PVS and MCS environments. Again, having done little with personal vDisk in the past, this was a useful lab to attend to familiarise myself with the product.
I also attended one of the self-service learning labs and performed a CloudGateway installation with Storefront and Netscaler AGEE integration.
Citrix have made the unusual (but very welcome) step of making all the self-service labs available until the end of the year. Nice one!
Did Synergy meet my expectations? Yes! Highlights…
XenClient
Before Synergy, I posted a blog around what I hoped to get out of the conference including some questions I was looking for answers to on the XenClient roadmap.
Well, good news and bad here. I did get an answer in that the XenClient 2.x roadmap is coming to an end and all development will focus on the 4.x Enterprise version. The bad news is there is no upgrade path from one to the other, or any way to move VMs from one to another due to different vhd formats having been used in the 2.x product, and the ex-NXtop 4.x Enterprise version. So, I’m going to have to completely rebuild by XenClient laptop, and use an external mechanism to backup all the VMs running there then restore into the Enterprise Edition.
Partner program
Another item I followed-up on from Synergy 2011 was the changes made to the partner program that introduced a minimum annual revenue generation requirement to remain as a Citrix partner. I raised this with the head of the EMEA partner program and the response was positive. They recognise that, especially in EMEA, there are a number of partners who are consulting-only and don’t sell licenses. Citrix have introduced a new tier of “consulting partner” that you can be tagged with by contacting your regions partner operations team. This flag will mean you don’t need to transact the $5k of annual new business, and, rather surprisingly, also don’t need to maintain the full set of technical certifications (only the CCSP’s are required). Consulting partners are still encourage to log CARs to get recognition where it’s due. So, welcome news from Citrix in that area, which put me in a great mood to enjoy the rest of the conference.
Synergy game
One new item I did enjoy was the Synergy game – collecting codes from around the venue and competing with fellow attendees for the most points. It did ensure I got the most out of the conference by attending all the sessions and training available.
Shame the game appeared to have some bugs, which didn’t make it a level playing field across all devices, but hopefully Citrix will take this into account when choosing the winner, and address these for the next Synergy.
Conference WiFi
The WiFi was much improved from 2011 and I don’t think there was ever a time that I lost connectivity all week. Even during the keynote sessions, with thousands of other devices in the same room, I could tweet via WiFi (although I think part of that was down to my device which has 802.11n 5GHz support – many iPhone users with 2.4GHz only could not connect at the same time)
Credit to the tech guys who flew all the kit over from the US and installed it. Top job.
Areas for improvement
Whilst my conference was generally positive, there were a few areas that I thought could be improved. These didn’t all make it into the feedback form so hopefully will find their way back to the organisers.
Synergy mobile app
Whilst having a mobile app that allows off-line viewing of the sessions is a great step forward, it would be nice to be able to configure this to auto-update its data without prompts when on WiFi. As the app seemed to update it’s data every few minutes, the constant prompts to update got quite intrusive after a while.
The stability of the app can certainly be improved – on my Galaxy Nexus running ICS the app frequently crashed when navigating around it.
Solutions Expo
I don’t know whether I was just more busy than most, but there was no time to spend with anyof the ecosystem vendors, or even Citrix, in the Solutions expo hall. There was always either labs, breakout sessions or keynotes taking place. It didn’t help that both keynote session ran over, eating into the facetime available with vendors. Maybe one of the welcome parties should be held in the venue to increase the time available to talk with vendors rather than bus us all somewhere else.
Keynote timing
Both keynotes ran over time, the second day super session by 20 minutes, meaning there was no time for lunch between the finish of the super session and the start of my lab at 1pm. Given you need to get into labs bang on time to avoid your place being given to people in the standby queue, keeping sessions to time is important.
Synergy game
Despite collecting all the available codes, I was still several places down the leaderboard. On querying this with the tech helpdesk, it appears that some of the surveys were not showing up on Android devices, and other surveys had been submitted twice, incorrectly giving double the points.
Next year
As I tweeted a few days before the conference started, next year will see Synergy move to ExCel centre in London so presents a great opportunity to welcome old friends and colleages to home turf. As with the two previous Synergy’s I will be organising a consultants apartment (despite not needing one myself) so do watch out for details if it’s something you could make use of.
As last years Synergy Apartment experiment was a great success I’m doing it again this year!
What’s the deal?
There are many independent consultants (like myself) who fund their trip to Synergy out of their own pockets. We don’t get paid whilst attending, and we can’t claim any travel or accommodation expenses from clients or employers.
The official “Conference hotels” are all €195-€200 per night. For those staying in Barcelona for both Summit and Synergy, that’s almost €1000 on hotels alone. Expensive.
To reduce this cost I’ve booked a three-bedroom apartment very close to the Barcelona ICC where the Synergy Conference is taking place, and am offering the two other rooms at cost price which results in a vastly reduced accommodation cost compared to nearby hotels.
Netscaler 10 introduced a brand new HTML-based GUI
Netscaler 10 HTML GUI
However this nice new feature does have it’s issues. Because certain elements still require the old Java GUI, when launching items from the old GUI from the new one, sometimes windows and dialogs can get “lost” behind other windows or tabs. I’ve seen several “window focus” issues with Netscaler 10 when using Google Chrome with various tabs where I’ve been chasing windows that keep dissappearing when I click on them!
However, it is possible to force the use of the old full Java console even on Netscaler 10, which is free from these focus issues. Just change the URL of the admin console from:
/menu/neo
to
/menu/guia
Netscaler 10 Java GUI
There’s no guarantee that Citrix might remove the old Java console completely in a future firmware, but hopefully if they do, they’ll have fixed the window focus glitches by then (in fact, several are fixed in the latest Netscaler 10 firmware)
